Company
AbsorbedThe Liverpool and Manchester Railway
Liverpool · 1823 – 1846
Absorbed into the London and North Western Railway in 1846. The line it opened in 1830 is still in use.
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened on 15 September 1830, between the port that landed the cotton and the town that spun it. It was not the first railway. It was the first to run steam locomotives on a timetable, for goods and for passengers, and to pay its owners.
George Stephenson and his son Robert built the line and the Rocket, which had won the Rainhill trials the year before. The opening day also killed William Huskisson, a member of Parliament, who stepped onto the track. The accident did not stop the railway. It advertised the speed.
A new payroll beside the track
Drivers, firemen, guards, porters, and clerks at the stations were employed by the company, not by a contractor who came and went. Signalmen followed rules written down because a mistake was fatal. The work was shift work, outdoors, and tied to a clock other industries then copied. Maintenance of the permanent way created a gang that walked the line for a living. None of these jobs existed, in this combination, before the company.
Absorbed into a larger line
The company was amalgamated into the Grand Junction and then, in 1846, into the London and North Western, one of the giants that later nationalization swept up. The 1830 route is still in use. The company that proved the idea lasted sixteen years as itself, which is long enough to invent a workforce and not long enough to become an institution.
The work it organized
- Engine driver
- Fireman
- Signalman
- Station clerk
On the timeline
Related
- The London and Birmingham RailwayAbsorbed
- The Great Western RailwayDissolved
- The British railway companiesReorganized